Bonds
by Eledhwen
Summary: Immediately post-series 4. Rehab is tough for everyone. (Written before series 5 started airing, and thus subsequently AU now. Though not much.)


_**Disclaimer: **they are Toby Whithouse's creation and belong to the BBC. I'm only borrowing._

* * *

He's worst at night. It turns out that someone who has lived for 500 years has a truly extraordinary vocabulary, and can switch from swearing and insults to pleading and flattery with scarce a halt. When he's not turning the atmosphere of Honolulu Heights blue, Hal is working at his bonds, fighting against them with every ounce of his not-inconsiderable strength.

For the first night they sit up with him. Alex makes tea, Tom drinks it politely, without mentioning that Annie's tea was far superior. They talk, trying to ignore the invective and insults coming from the vampire by the window, learning about each other. Tom finds Alex's life with family extraordinary, and she cannot understand his roving existence with McNair.

On the second night, Tom's eyes are bloodshot from tiredness after a day at the café. Alex sends him to bed, and finds a book in Hal's room to curl up with. She still doesn't quite understand how she can touch things, make tea, read a book, but it's a comfort to have something like _Pride & Prejudice_ in her hands.

Hal's quiet at first. He's staring into space – Alex wonders if perhaps vampires sleep like this, their eyes wide and empty – until he turns to her and just looks at her for a long period. He's utterly still. She tries to read on for a bit, but his gaze is making her twitchy.

"What?"

"I wonder what I saw in you," he says.

"I'm sure I don't know what I saw in you," Alex retorts.

Hal's lips twitch. "Touché. Truly, though; you're not at all my usual type."

"What's that?" she asks, genuinely curious.

"Compliant," says Hal, and smiles, canines showing just a little. "Did Cutler tell you why he killed you as he did?"

Alex has a nasty feeling she's not going to like the explanation, but it has been bothering her, so she shakes her head.

"I did the same to his wife," Hal explains, conversationally. "She was a pretty thing. I'd wanted Nick to deal with her, but he didn't have the guts."

Alex digests this. It makes her feel a little sick, although she knows well that it's only a feeling now. She will not be sick, she can push the feeling away. "I was just a pawn in your twisted little relationship, then," she comments. "Thanks very much."

"My pleasure," says Hal, and suddenly heaves on the straps, muscles taut as he tries to break free. "Now let me fucking go!"

She gets up and turns her back, and deliberately walks out to the kitchen, leaving him raving in the chair.

In the morning, he apologises, and he's quiet most of the day. But as night falls he starts talking again. Tom gets up from the table where he's reading a magazine, and vanishes up the stairs. After a moment, listening to Hal detail what he plans to do with Tom's hide if he ever gets out of the chair, Alex rent-a-ghosts upstairs too.

They turn Tom's crackly old radio on loud and make awkward jokes about annoying the neighbours, and eventually Tom's yawning turns into snores. Alex turns the radio off and realises Hal has stopped ranting.

She goes downstairs the normal way and peers around the corner of the bar. The vampire's head is slumped over and he is not moving; for a second, Alex panics, trying to dredge up CPR from her memory, before she recalls that both of them are already dead. Hal does not need CPR and she would be unable to give it.

But he is sleeping, apparently, his eyes closed and his body limp and still. It is a change. She picks up her book and lounges on the sofa to read, looking up occasionally to see if Hal is still asleep.

By morning Alex has finished _Sense & Sensibility_ and is wondering what to start on next when Hal wakes. He lifts his head, stiffly, and blinks at her, and she finds herself tensing in case his eyes and teeth do the vampire thing.

Instead, he moves his head from side to side and back and forth, easing out the kinks, before asking for a cup of tea.

"Sure. How are you feeling?" Alex puts the book down and stands.

Hal considers before answering – another change. "Calmer," he says, eventually.

Alex makes the tea, and holds the mug as he drinks it. When Tom comes down the television is on, another first, and they're companionably watching the breakfast news.

"If you carry on like this we'll have you out of them chains in no time," Tom observes, on his way out to the café.

"Not yet," Hal says. "I'm getting there, but not yet."

It takes a few days more before he asks, rather than demands, to be loosened from his restraints. He asks first to spend a few hours with his legs loose, before being restrained again at night. The following day, after Tom expresses dismay over the smell of unwashed vampire, they undo all the buckles and straps and chains and Hal goes upstairs for a long shower.

When he comes back down, Tom has gone out to work again and Alex is trying to make a dent in the washing up. Neither of them have felt much like it recently. Hal, in a clean white shirt, hovers in the kitchen doorway and watches Alex scrub at a pan.

"Stop lurking and come and help," she snaps, when his silent presence irritates her just enough.

He comes forward and finds a pair of Marigolds. Alex is tempted to laugh, but one look at Hal's tense face stops her and she stands aside to let him plunge his hands into the sink. While he washes, she dries, and gradually the tension leaves his shoulders.

"Feeling better?" she asks, when the dishes are washed, dried and put away.

Hal holds out a hand. There is a barely discernible tremor, but he nods.

They do not use the chains and bindings again. By the weekend, Tom has put everything away in the basement, and the living room is back to rights. The coffee table is covered with Hal's complex spiral of dominoes, but Alex finds she does not mind. It's part of the routine, the new routine the three of them are finding together.

A vampire, a werewolf and a ghost, just trying to get on with being.


End file.
